May 2, 2003

Sorry, Andrew
G

OK, Andrew, you make some decent points in your HP and LotR article but some of your similarities are a little contrived. Firstly, you suggest that the troll in the Hogwarts bathroom is copied from the cave troll incident in Balin’s Tomb. This is unlikely, as Rowling has said that she has not read LotR since her teens. I read it last year and I can’t remember if there was even a cave troll present in the book and if there was it certainly didn’t have as large a role as it did in the film. And I sincerely doubt that Rowling knew what was going to be in the Fellowship movie (or even that there was going to be a Fellowship movie) at the time of writing the first Potter book. Your second point is that there is a baby dragon in Potter and a very big very nasty dragon in The Hobbit (but not in LotR). If you think about it, LotR is probably one of very few books of its genre NOT to include a dragon (except Gandalf’s firework at Bilbo’s birthday party) so I think we can let Rowling away with this one too. The Shelob / Aragog thing I’ll give you but if you think about it there aren’t really all that many character similarities between Gandalf and Dumbledore – the just look kinda similar, but then they both look like Merlin too. And Saruman, so by your logic, Tolkien copied from himself. You also compare The Whomping Willow to the Ents. This is a fair comparison but I feel the need to take it a little further for you. While the Whomping Willow is vaguely similar to the Ents, it is EXACTLY THE SAME as Old Man Willow in the Old Forrest. The goblins in the two works are also vastly different to each other and your point that Harry and Frodo are both orphans is irrelevant as neither is the first fictional character to be an orphan and they were both written as orphans for very different reasons. Frodo is made an orphan to explain the fact that he is living with Bilbo as his heir (giving Bilbo a wife wouldn’t really have worked) while Harry’s orphan status was doubtlessly decided on to add some mystery to his past and to make Hogwarts his salvation, taking him away from his dreaded aunt and uncle. Just to prove I’m not out to get you here, you are correct about Sauron and Voldemort – this is blatant copying. How you can compare the flying car in Potter to Gwaihir though astounds me. Characters in both stories had modes of transport. If I was trying that hard I could probably find some amazing similarities between The Silence of the Lambs and 101 Dalmatians (THEY BOTH HAVE ANIMALS!). Gilmi and Hagrid are also very clearly not the only two hairy guys in cinematic history. There you have it: of the ten best similarities you could come up with I feel that there is serious fault with at least seven. Now that I have gotten towards the end of this unexpectedly long post (sorry), I cannot help but feel that I may have come off sounding a little pro-Potter. Can I therefore state for the record that I have never read a Potter book and that I was thoroughly bored while watching The Chamber of Secrets. Every piece of Tolkien I have ever read is far superior, especially my personal favourite, The Silmarillion and the only famous work of Tolkien that can really be compared to Potter is The Hobbit like Potter and unlike LotR it was written primarily as a children’s story and has subsequently found mass appeal among older generations.